If anyone cares, my personal survey answers were as follows:
Enjoyable: 1
Competitive/balanced: 2
Mickey mouse rock-paper-scizors tier where 9/10 teams are HO because anything else is nigh unusable thanks to the ridiculous power level of the tier.
Matches come down to tera predictions or who gets the lead advantage since most of the good mons are button clickers with barely any prediction for the most part. I cant understand how people would ever like this format at serious play.
I voted to ban gliscor and i dont regret that, but even with the gliscor mirrors against balance it was more dynamic and in my control than ogerpon rillaboom sneasler kingambit simulator; alternatively "neither of us will set webs now and we both play super scuffed as a result" (because cinderace is on every HO team)
All of the following are directly ripped from a post in this rmt i made where i also go on a rant about the state of the tier. Check it out for the full thing.
It's very relevant so i figured that instead of writing the same things in a different way id just paste it here.
Ogerpon 
: 5
It's no secret that Wellspring is easily one of the top dogs at the moment. Grass + Water STAB with access to Knock Off and Play Rough is very hard to play against defensively, while offensively it has a good Speed tier and generally avoids the OHKO threat with ease from boostless, choiceless opponents. Even if did not, it's not a one-mon team. It can fall back onto it's teammates and come back in later to force a KO or a trade. Much like Volcarona (but different, obviously) it can pick what it gets checked by on the defensive side thanks to it's wide array of tools like Substitute, Horn Leech, Leech Seed, Synthesis, Knock Off and Encore.
Like we witnessed with Hearthflame
, i 100% think that if Wellspring is banned people will simply shift to using Cornerstone instead. Yes, it's theoretically worse, but in the end it's still a hard to wall STAB combination with boosting and the same support options. It's going to be the same story already told twice with a lighter tone. I believe anyway.
Manaphy 
: 5
You either run a super specific answer, like Pex (needs tera), Dirge (needs tera), Unaware Clefable (exploitable) or Milotic (not fond of energy ball, walled by Ogerpon-W most of the time), or you probably lose as soon as it has the opportunity to set up. This mon is dumb. The risk does not even compare to the reward in both Tail Glow and Take Heart sets. You can play Manaphy much like you'd play Kingambit: create the ideal scenario for it to sweep everything. And, unlike Kingambit i dare say, it has it much easier. It's speed allows it to fit well on Webs, and it's boosting is much more immediately threatening. If it's faster, Take Heart sets turn would-be checks into more setup fodder. This is the only one i forgot to include on that post and i am in class rn so ill leave it at that unfortunately
Sneasler 
: 5
A textbook strong offensive threat. Both naturally fast and strong while possessing a deadly STAB combination that goes unresisted against non Ghost- and Poison-Types, whose defensive presence is noticeably nonexistent aside from Gholdengo. It also has access to Unburden and Poison Touch alongside the teammates and tools to make the most of it: Rillaboom and Grassy Seed to maximize Unburden sweeper potential and the less seen Fake Out + U-turn combo for Poison Touch on balance. Swords Dance paired with Tera's existence will also not only let it boost itself to nuclear bomb heights with Tera Fighting Close Combat but it can also choose to run Acrobatics or Tera Blast to pick what would-be checks it wants to effortlessly get rid of. This is a very polarizing mon, and it doesn't take a SV OU expert to realize why, since Grassy Seed is effectively a more than 2x better Booster Energy when ran with the also strong on it's own Rillaboom
to proc Unburden, perfecting the old RillaLucha core from gen 8 (though might have been more common with Koko). Again, since defensive play has been both severely cut and is easier to take down for many reasons, Sneasler's """"""checks"""""" not named defensive Gholdengo at full HP will almost 100% need to rely predicting what attack it'll go for and using a Tera that resists it for a chance at a comeback. I don't think this mon is balanced for the current metagame at all. Should probably be suspected at the very least.
Kingambit
: 5
Another case of "broken checks broken". This thing is tolerable to me purely because HO is stupidly hard to deal with otherwise, and it's not particularly hard to cook up counterplay with the 3 (?) viable Encore users, Sucker Punch's limited PP and the need for Tera in order for Gambit to safely set up.
As we slowly deal with the other abominations on this not so very green Earth, eventually it just... has to go. Unless DLC 2 somehow raises the bar for what's considered OU good by a considerable margin, Tera paired with it's great bulk (why does this thing have 100/120/85 bulk?????) giving it plenty of opportunities for a safe-ish Swords Dance or boosting it's already enormous raw power with Tera Dark simply turns Kingambit into the predictable unpredictable killing machine we know and either hate or love. But mostly hate.
A new suspect is in order once we settle everything else + whether we really or not want Tera to stay via it's eventual retest.
Gholdengo
: 5
SVOU is a hazard hellhole with or without Gliscor. And a good part of it is because this guy's ability is a broken one. I'll assume everyone here knows what it does, so let's skip that.
This mon is warping the tier around it. That's not an opinion. That's a fact.
It does so much all at once, and some of it is by simply existing. It doesn't need to be out in the field, it doesn't even need to be used on a team, just needs to exist to throw Corviknight, an otherwise good option for removal, completely out of the window and straight to the garbage bin.
Tusk or bust. Treads if you're confident on that one specific use. Then Tusk has to always run 248/252 Jolly, because it gets outsped by Gholdengo if it doesn't, and it NEEDS to outspeed it to do the job only it can do, unless you're fine with 4 layers of hazards being stacked on you (most teams aren't. who would've guessed), or the equally (if not more) ruining Sticky Web.
Yes, you can use Cinderace
, who does show up on most if not amost all HO teams, to play the "neither of us wants to set webs now lmao" game, but like...
at that point, ask yourself: Is this a healthy dynamic? Is this a healthy tier? Is one mon's mere threat of existing on my opponent's team a fair justification of the lengths at which we go to deal with the problems it brings?
Up to you to decide.
Of course, we don't know how a Ghold-less meta would be, if it would be better at all or not, but we should really explore it for the sake of making an informed decision! Not really sure how we'd go about that though. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of suspect ladders and such, but it doesn't strike me as a bad idea to let everyone get a taste.
Of course, that's only it's support utility. Because this mon is also an offensive powerhouse on it's own that, guess what, also picks it's counters. The combination of Make It Rain + Shadow Ball goes unresisted by any relevant defensive mons while possessing a good Speed tier that permits it to run Air Balloon, Choice Specs and Choice Scarf. It can also opt for defensive sets thanks to Recover, though those are worse atm.
It truly does almost everything at once, only really lacking hazards, pivoting and removal.
Other things to look at
Dire Claw, if Sneasler does not go
I think we can all agree, regardless of our opinion on everything else, that Dire Claw is a blatantly uncompetitive move. ~16.6% individually to sleep, paralysis or poison, with a collective 50% chance for one of these effects. Playing against sneasler can be a very infuriating thing to do thanks to it's ~21% chance to have you not do anything at all in the turn you're hit by it (sleep + full para). Secondary effects aside, it's identical to Poison Jab.
"Oh, but the policy" if the policy mandates Sneasler to ALWAYS be banned instead over this move, then the policy probably needs to be changed to accomodate for these unprecedented scenarios. This isn't a holy scripture we're commanded to follow, much like IRL laws they are subject to change and refinement to reflect the passage of time and evolution of our society. We're witnessing for the first time a situation where an otherwise interesting and viable singlular mon has a move that is very clearly against what's considered as ok, and that will do just fine without it. Think of Houndstone in the pre HOME era. Until Basculin came around, because of the tiering policy it was banished to Ubers despite being a regular lower tier mon that no one would have a problem with otherwise, that might've found a spot and contributed towards a more developed metagame in, like, RU or something. It's not just one singular instance anymore in gen 9, so i do believe it justifies reviewing the tiering policy over.
Booster Energy
This might come off as a surprise to some, but Booster energy is not so balanced in my eyes. Fast offense mons, in the past, when sometimes forced to run Choice Scarf as part of the counterplay vs faster threats or revenge killers. Booster Energy spins the concept of Scarf's drawback and changes it to "only once". Yeah, this is a fair tradeoff in theory, but it may be a little too much when your whole playstyle mostly revolves around "have everything that comes in get as much damage as possible into the opponent's team before forcing them to KO me for free momentum". Roaring Moon
was a prime example of this: Proto Atk gives you an immediate 30% increase, greatly increasing your OHKO capacity; or if they're worried about outspeeding already boosted mons like Quark Speed Moth and Iron Valiant they can run Proto Speed instead, though this was less common.
Iron Moth is probably the best example for a Booster Energy abuser: it can boost it's Speed on arrival, outspeeding every non-Scarf user below 111 base Speed without any drawbacks (not that there are any real Scarf users above base 110 anyway) and start setting up with Fiery Dance or go for Sub.
Iron Valiant does the same, but in a different flavor: it's faster, has better setup options and support tools, but is (a little) less immediately threatening.
In all three cases, you effectively null almost any direct and immediate offensive counterplay, and to Roaring Moon specifically or for offensive boosters on more daring Webs teams you've got what's essentially a Life Orb with no drawback as long as you're in,
on Pokémon that are already strong without it and can easily become hard to handle or snowball out of control. Tera also plays a part in this by facilitating a safer setup or by simply hitting harder. I'm not a fan. I think we, as a community, should start to discuss this item more.
free her. let her come back home. its been a year, finchinator, at least bring her back just one more time...
/
on a more serious note, i believe both zamazenta-H and zamazenta-C could be given another look later down the line, be it in the near future or after DLC2
/ Booster Energy - Stupid revenge killer. This or Booster energy, since booster has caused issues on Valiant, Moon, and Moth. It's one ot the other.
Unban - A dream, but unlikely before DLC 2...
- 4 , broken lol
- 5, another broken mon , the number of games this mon cheeses with dire claw is insane , unburden gives it the speed it needs to outspeed offensive mons while it can just cheese defensive pokemons
- 1 , it's not broken , with the amount of sneaslers , the amount of encore , great tusks , wisp , rilla/dnite priority if it teras all make gambit no where near broken rn , if the mon still feels broken imo it's a problem in teambuilding
3, encore , rilla , ogrepon all these things make it less broken than it would have , dual dance set is very scary to face against but I don't think it's broken . It's still a scary mon so I wouldn't be surprised if it got suspect tested
- 3, same as manaphy , potential suspect candidate in the future but rn with all the grassy terrain running around it's not broken imo
